[94] Vita, p. 6a.
[95] Ibid. 14b. I have introduced into my account a note of gradualness which is presented by no single (even authentic) document of the Vita, but which any attempt at harmonizing those documents imperatively requires. For there is, on the one hand, the repeated insistence upon her four years of particular penances for her own particular sins; and the vivid account of the final complete withdrawal of all sight of those sins and of all desire for those penances (Ibid. pp. 12b, 13c; 14b, 5c). And there is, on the other hand, the, apparently, equally authentic saying, as to her performing her penances, before the end of those years, without any particular object in view (Ibid. p. 14b). The only unforced harmonization is then to assume that a period, in which the sight of her particular sins had been at first all but unintermittent and then still predominant, had shaded off into another period, in which this sight occurred in ever fewer moments, until at last, at the end of four years, a day came on which it ceased altogether.
[96] The only possible dates are 1475 or 1476. For the change referred to takes place “some appreciable time (alquanto tempo) after her conversion” (Vita, p. 10a); and yet it must be early enough to allow of twenty-three Lents and Advents between the beginning of the change up to its end. And this end came at latest in 1501 (p. 127a), but probably in 1499, the year in which Don Marabotto became her Confessor. The Lent of 1496 (what remained of it on Lady-Day of that year) seems to me the more likely of the two possible starting-points.
[97] Vita, p. 10a.
[98] Ibid. p. 11a.
[99] Ibid. p. 10b.
[100] Vita, p. 8a.
[101] See below, next page.
[102] MS. “A,” p. 24, title to chapter vii; Vita, p. 10a. Twenty-five Lents are too many, because: (1) it is impossible to interpret the “alquanto tempo dopo la sua conversione,” when these fasts began (Ibid. p. 10a), as less than two years; and (2) it is impossible to bring her resignation of the Matronship of the Hospital lower down than the autumn of 1497, a resignation which the Ibid. (p. 96) tells us took place in consequence of her “great bodily weakness,” which forced her to “take some food after Holy Communion to restore her bodily forces, even though it were a fast day.” This allows for at most twenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents.
[103] Ibid. p. 11b.